Open Week
Open Week: Sun 16th Feb – Sat 3rd March : Re-creation.
CathSoc Ceilidh
Coming soon: Cathsoc Ceilidh Fri 17th Feb, 8pm Newman Room, entry £5 on the door. Come
along, bring your friends, and enjoy drinks in probably the cheapest bar in Oxford – Barnabas.
Holiness through Study
Holiness through study: 6pm Holy Hour and Benediction, 7pm Cathsoc Curry plus 8pm Fr Andrew Byrne, Holiness through study.
Experiencing God Everywhere
IN JESUS God became human experience: ‘What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed so that you also may have fellowship with us, as we are in union with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.’1 John 1:1-3.
When asked about the essence of his message, Jesus replied: ‘Come and see.’ – come for the day and experience the presence of my company. He washed people’s feet. He used the metaphor of weddings to explain the nature of union with God. His humanity was seen in that experience of having his own feet washed by Mary’s tears, dried by her hair and anointed with her ointment.
Before he could believe in the Resurrection, Thomas needed to touch the wounds of the risen Christ. Deep healing and true faith are often found within the experience of woundedness.
Knowledge alone, ideas and concepts do not change us profoundly. Experience does. ‘Some things can only be seen by eyes filled with tears.’ After it we see things differently. Our experience is true when we hold no filtering lens, no preconceived notions: we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable in our openness to reality. ‘Do not be afraid.’ Luke 12.32
Authentic conversion is experienced bodily and emotionally. It was to make all our pain redemptive that divine love
became wounded flesh.
We experience the Holy Spirit in charity, joy, peace, patience , kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. And that list of St Paul’s is not meant to be exclusive: he includes elsewhere humility and forgiveness, ‘whatever is excellent, honourable and worthy of praise.’ Gal 5.22, Col 3.12, Phil 4. 8
God became flesh, the place of experience, richer or poorer, better or worse, in sickness or health. Faith is that attitude which empowers us to experience, in healing depth, all the hard and joyful and routine experiences that each day may bring.
God desired to become our bodies, our senses, our emotions in time and space, so that divine being could be experienced everywhere, by everyone.
People are looking for the meaning of life, for the experience of being fully alive. They are looking for eternity. And eternity is not just to do with the hereafter. Eternity is a quality. If we don’t get it where we are here and now we won’t get it anywhere. The experience of eternity right now in some degree is the function of life. Heaven is the completion of that experience.
We experience something of God’s presence in everything that happens to us. There is a divine whisper in every sound; even the sound of temptation.
Our future resurrection will reveal that we have been experiencing it all our lives. ‘Heaven will be recognised as a country we have already entered, and in whose light and warmth we have already lived:’
Women’s World Day of Prayer
Women’s World Day of Prayer: Fri 2nd March, 1pm, Friends Meeting House, 43 St Giles
St Frideswide
Frideswide Literature: Oxford’s patron Saint, Henry Mayr-Harting, 19 Feb, 8pm Christchurch
Mary Painting and Sculpture
Mary Painting and Sculpture, 12 Feb, 8pm in Christchurch: Mynheer’s Flight to Egypt
The Week Ahead: Third Week
Sun 29th Jan: 4th Sunday of the Year
9.00 am Fr Michael Barnes SJ (Heythrop College)
11.00am Dom Felix Stephens OSB (Master of St Benet’s)
5.45pm Fr Peter Brearley SDB (Parish priest in Cowley)
5.00pm Hertford Evensong, Fr Dushan Croos sj preaching
6.15pm St Hugh’s Evensong, Ms Alex Harrod Preaching, Light in the University
Mon 30th : Monday of week 4 of the year
1.05pm Mass
Tue 31st: St John Bosco, Founder of the Salesians of Don Bosco
1.05pm Mass
5.45pm St Edmund Hall College Mass
6.00pm Jesus College Mass
Wed 1st: Feria
1.05pm Mass
Thu 2nd: FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD
1.05pm Mass
6.00pm Candlelit Mass
7.00pm CathSoc pasta, All welcome, plus Fr John O’Malley SJ, Trent and Vatican II:
Two Anniversaries of Two Misunderstood Councils, 8.15pm Newman Room.
Fri 3rd: St Blaise, bishop & martyr or St Ansgar, bishop
1.05pm Mass with St Blaise’s blessing of throats
6.00pm St Catherine’s College Mass
6.30pm Prayer for the Curious, with food, followed by
8.00pm onwards Bar Night
Sat 4th: Feria
12.00pm Mass
5.30pm Spanish Mass
Sun 5th: Fifth Sunday of the Year Job 7:1-4,6-7 (Ps 146) & 1 Cor 9:16-19,22-23, Mark 1:29-39
9.00 am Fr Simon Bishop SJ
11.00am Rev Nicodème Ferré (Archdiocese of Paris) preaching
5.45pm Fr Dushan Croos SJ
CathSoc pasta
Thu 2nd Feb: 7pm CathSoc pasta, all welcome, plus Fr John O’Malley SJ, Trent and Vatican II: Two Anniversaries of Two Misunderstood Councils, 8.15pm Newman Room.
Feast of the Presentation
Thu 2nd Feb, 6pm, St Thomas More Chapel: Candlelit Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple followed at 7pm by CathSoc pasta, all welcome, plus Fr John O’Malley SJ, Trent and Vatican II: Two Anniversaries of Two Misunderstood Councils, 8.15pm Newman Room.
